edit: After so careful thought and reading a few other reviews I decided to drop my rating. There is just too much wrong with this book, and "pretty words" can't fix it. As on review stated very well: "fucking weird". The author wrote about college like she hadn't ever set foot on a campus. You don't get bullied for wearing sweats in college. Most people wear sweats in college. And Ariel, the MC, hallucinates or dreams more than any healthy person. Any time her boyfriend comes on to her, she "goes to the otherland". Wtf does that even mean? I enjoyed reading this book, but I hated every character. I had no sympathy for any of them. The final climactic scene was a mess that was impossible to follow. And there was an epilogue like something out of a weird fairy tale. I quit.
update:
I'm too tired and in pain for a full review. Let's just break this down to the basics. The writing style was very pretty and fleshed out. But it had a few errors, like using the same word as both an adverb and adjective in the same sentence. That just makes things sound redundant.
The story itself was...uh....weird. It was trying so hard to be deep, and it ended up being whacked out, like it was written by someone on LSD. The main character spent 200 pages crying and starving herself and wandering the streets looking for her missing friend. When she isn't weeping like a maniac, she's being a horrible human being to all around her or just being a total shut in that's never seen the outside world. The description of college life seemed more like high school, with the way the guys bully and torture the MC. Stuff happens that goes unexplained, a lot of her behavior is never addressed, and even on the last page of the book, you are left feeling like maybe MC was high the whole time and the whole damn book was just a bad trip. Getting naked in a rose garden at night? Rolling in mud for strangers? Dancing on the beach with a bunch of strangers dressed as faeries? I really have no clue what I just read.
The mystery I had figured out by page 50. Not much of a mystery. All in all, fucking bizarre. But 3 stars because it was written so pretty.
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